bnlitin's Full Review: Apple iPod 3rd Generation White (30 GB) MP3 Player
I just purchased an Ipod 30GB (3rd generation), mostly for playing music and audio books (from Audible.com). I was using my Ipaq 3835 Windows CE Device for these things, but I was frustrated by its small storage capacity. On the Ipod, I now have 3500 songs and 30 audio books instantly accessible.
I like the ease of searching for songs and books. The Ipod is instantly on and syncs with my Windows PC using Itunes quickly and easily. I have not experienced any compatibility issues. Transferring files over Firewire is very quick and painless. Itunes works great with Ipod and is a great player for both MP3 and MP4 (which are preferred by Ipod). I encode all of my Audio CDs to the Apple's MP4 format (m4a) at 256Kbits/sec because it sounds better.
The sound quality of the Ipod is very good (when using high quality headphones) and quality encoding. The little earbugs that come with the Ipod are good for working out but are not of audiophile quality. I tried the Sennheiser HD497 headphone and they sound MUCH better.
If you're planning to use it in your car, the Belkin car charger is a must (and it also has a amplifier to boost the Ipod's weak signal).
I have not purchased any songs from the Itunes store as I don't like Apple's 128 kbit encoding. Other audio stores are no better in this regard. Standard Redbook Audio CDs encode audio at 1-1.4Megabits per second. To shrink audio to 128Kbits/sec requires throwing away audio data based on psycho-acoustic model of human hearing. I prefer the original CDs. Moreover, with DRM (digital rights management) if your PC crashes, you lose all your songs. Having a physical CD is a great backup. You can always buy the CDs used over Ebay or Half.com and it's much cheaper then $10/album that Itunes charges.
Positives:
- Quality Audio output
- Simple and elegant User Interface
- Ease of searching songs & albums
- Ease of sync'ing and downloading songs to PC
- Plays Audible Audio books & rememember where you left off
- Shuffle play (randomly selects next song to play)
- Plays MP3, MP4, WAV formats
- Integrates well with iTunes
- Instantly on (no slow power-up sequence)
- The LCD display is clear and simple
- Can rate songs. I can give any song played one to five stars. Then, based on my ratings, the Ipod can play only songs sufficiently highly rated using the Top-Rated playlist.
Negatives:
- Battery life is short (4-6 hours) (not advertised 8 hours)
- Battery itself is not easily replacable. May cost $99 to replace by Apple since all batteries eventually die
- Unit scratches easily (I have an armor case around it to protect it)
- Cannot play FLAC, APE, or Ogg Vorbis - three higher quality encoders than MP3 or MP4.
- No digital (SPDIF) output to digitally connect to an A/V receiver for best sound quality.
- Doesn't sync contacts automatically (with Outlook). It's not a major issue but it would be nice.
Bugs:
There is currently one major bug in Itunes for Windows that may crash your Ipod. If you change any tags in a song once it has been imported in Apple's MP4 format, it may not be able to play it again. The work-around I found is to make sure that all the Info (Tag) of a songs (ie song title, genre, artist name, etc) is correct before importing Mp3s or Audio CDs into Itunes. If you do so, you'll avoid this bug. Do NOT change any of these parameters once they are in Itunes. You may suddenly find that your Ipod is resetting itself for no apparent reason. If that occurs, find the last song played, delete it, and re-import it.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 380 Recommended for: Music Lovers - High Capacity Storage for an Entire Album Collection
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